She sat there near the stove, glum, then slowly picked up a few pots and pans and things to pack up, trying to keep a brave face on. Not a single one of them Browns ever lacked confidence in their Pa, I’ll say that for ’em. Just like him, they believed in the Negro being free and equal and all. Course they was out of their minds at the time, but they can be excused, being that they all growed-up religious fools, following the Bible to the letter. But Annie was wound down. She was feeling low. I couldn’t bear seeing her so spent, so I slipped over to her, and when she seen me she said, “I got a terrible feeling, Onion.”
“Ain’t no need to worry ’bout nothing,” I said.
“I knows I shouldn’t. But it’s hard to be brave about it, Onion.” Then she smiled. “I’m glad you coming with me and Martha.”
Why, I was so happy my heart could bust, but course I couldn’t say it, so I downplayed it like usual. “Yes, I am, too,” was all I could say.
“Help me get the rest of the things here?”
“Course.”
As we moved ’bout, making ready to leave, I begun to think on what my plans was. Annie and Martha lived on the Old Man’s claim in upstate New York near Canada. I couldn’t go up there with them. That would be too hard for me to be near Annie. I decided I would ride the wagon to Pennsylvania country and get off there, with the aim of getting to Philadelphia—if we could make it that far north. It weren’t a sure thing, for no matter how you sliced it, I was endangering ’em, surely. We would be rolling through slave country, and since we was traveling with speed, would have to move by day, which was dangerous, for the closer you got to the freedom line of Pennsylvania, the more slave patrols was likely to stop and confront Salmon ’bout whether he was transporting slaves. Salmon was young and strong-headed. He was like his Pa. He wouldn’t suffer no fools or slave patrols to stop him while he moved his sister and sister-in-law to safety, and he wouldn’t surrender me, neither. Plus he’d have to get back. He’d shoot first.
“I have to fetch some hay,” I told Annie, “for it’s better that I ride under the hay in the back of the wagon till we get to Pennsylvania.”
“That’s two days,” she said. “Better you sit up with us and pretend to be in bondage.”
But, seeing her pretty face staring at me so kind and innocent, I was losing my taste for pretending. I cut out for the shed without a word. There was some hay stored there, and I brung it to the Conestoga we was preparing to get movin’ on. I’d have to ride under the hay, in the wagon, in broad daylight till night for the better part of two days. Better to hide that way than out in the open. But, honest to Jesus, I was getting worn out with hiding by that time. Hiding in every way, I was, and I growed tired of it.
We loaded up the wagon the day before the big attack and left without ceremony. The Captain gived Annie a letter and said, “This is for your Ma and your sisters and brothers. I will see you soon or in the by and by, Lord willing.” To me he said, “Good-bye, Onion. You has fought the good fight and I will see you soon as your people is free, if God wills it.” I wished him luck, and we was off. I jumped inside the bottom of the wagon in the hay. They covered me with a plank that spanned along the side of the wagon and placed Annie on it, while Salmon, who was driving, sat up front with his sister-in-law Martha, Oliver’s wife.
Annie was sitting right above me as we moved out, and I could hear her throw out a tear or two amid the clattering of the wagon. After a while she stopped bawling and piped out, “Your people will be free when this is all done, Onion.”
“Yes, they will.”
“And you can go off and get a fiddle and sing and follows your dreams all you want. You can go on about your whole life singing when it’s all done.”
I wanted to say to her that I would like to stay where she was going and sing for her the rest of my life. Sing sonnets and religious songs and all them dowdy tunes with the Lord in ’em that she favored; I’d work whatever song she wanted if she asked me to. I wanted to tell her I was gonna turn ’bout, turn over a new leaf, be a new person, be the man that I really was. But I couldn’t, for it weren’t in me to be a man. I was but a coward, living a lie. When you thunk on it, it weren’t a bad lie. Being a Negro means showing your best face to the white man every day. You know his wants, his needs, and watch him proper. But he don’t know your wants. He don’t know your needs or feelings or what’s inside you, for you ain’t equal to him in no measure. You just a nigger to him. A thing: like a dog or a shovel or a horse. Your needs and wants got no track, whether you is a girl or a boy, a woman or a man, or shy, or fat, or don’t eat biscuits, or can’t suffer the change of weather easily. What difference do it make? None to him, for you is living on the bottom rail.
